


How To Live A Lie

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Angst, Big Brother Dean, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Demonic Possession, Family, Gabriel Being Gabriel, Gen, Humor, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Little Brother Sam, M/M, Sam-Centric, Secrets, Slow Burn, Teen Sam Winchester, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-12 04:42:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2096163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean, and Stonebridge High, and the strange Novak brothers that befriend them. A house of lies that consists of nightmares and beatings and absent parents and the weight of the world and creatures that hide in the shadows. </p><p>Sam just wanted to get through the weeks. He never factored Gabriel Novak into the equation. Dean never even imagined someone like Castiel. And no one thought these were going to be the days that changed everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings in the tags, read them carefully. Comment and leave kudos if you like.

**A/N: Teenchesters high school AU. Gabriel and Castiel are** _**completely human.** _ **** **Early on Destiel, slow burn Sabriel, probably some Ruby/Sam and touches of Meg/Castiel in first few chapters. Warnings for homophobia, extreme descriptions of violence, child abuse and foul language. Sam-centric.**

**0-0-**

_That there, that's not me_   
_I go where I please_   
_I walk through walls_   
_I float down the Liffey_

How To Disappear Completely, Radiohead.

He was screaming. A voice, that ripped up through his throat, smashed through his lips, entered the air in knives of pure terrible sound. But— _he_ wasn't screaming, there was something inside him, wailing out from deep into his bones and out of his mouth and exploding in a cloud of black smoke. Something evil and wincing, something that dug claws in and  _ripped_ on its way out from inside of him.

Sam felt his eyes roll back and stumbled inwards on himself. He was aware of emptiness. Of control. "Sammy?" a worried voice and heavy footsteps, and he collapsed onto his knees in a painful thud, was caught by warm hands, fallen against a warm weight. "D'n," he mumbled against his brother's chest, and succumbed to darkness.

-0-0-0

He woke in the backseat of the Impala.

As trained, Sam categorized; fractured wrist, bruised ribs, mouth of heavy fluff he couldn't gulp around, throat grazed and painful, bruised knees and worse elbows, shredded knuckles where the demon had punched too hard with his body. The hunt came back in a painful smash of black eyes and screams that weren't his. He'd been possessed by a goddamned demon and he hurt. Like. Hell.

"Sammy? You awake?"

"Yeah," Sam grunted, pulling himself up to lean against the window. He looked forwards, where Dean was sitting shotgun as customary and Dad was driving. Dad looked back at him, didn't even smile and went back to the road. Heart-warming.

"Feeling okay?"

"Well, considering," Sam nodded. He was suddenly excruciatingly hungry, and couldn't help a groan. "Can I have something to eat?"

Dean tossed him a sandwich. "Just hold on, we can get something more when we arrive."

"Arrive? Arrive where?" he enquired around a mouthful of stale bread that just tasted worse with his mouth of heavy fluff.

"Kent, Washington."

"Yeah?" Sam leaned forwards, regretted it as various injuries screamed, and leaned back. "Can I go to school again?"

"Yes," said their father. "You and Dean are going to Stonebridge High. We're going to wait until you're a bit older until you go on any more dangerous hunts."

Sam tried to cover his smile, but Dean caught it and made a face. Sam rolled his eyes and grinned.

A hollowness inside where once a demon resided flared painfully, and Sam gulped, closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

-0-0

A stumbling into a rundown motel in the middle of town. The pain from his knees was so much worse when he was standing, but Sam managed to get up the stairs when he was leaning with his good arm on Dean. It was a margin nicer than any other motels they usually stayed in, with three whole beds and clean pillows and sheets on all of them, and Sam collapsed onto one and watched Dean and Dad bring up their few bags. "Go to sleep, Sammy." Dean said with a fond grin when he saw Sam still up, and pushed him gently into bed and covered him with the sheet like he used to do when Sam was younger.

Sam fell asleep.

-0-0

He didn't wake up to a beating; that was later. He woke screaming, screaming with an inhuman screech, black smoke wafting out excruciatingly slowly. The demon dug tighter inside of him as it was ripped slowly away and whispered carefully inside his ears, next to his heartbeat, that he was broken.

And then it went.

And then Sam was falling apart, skin flaying to pieces, muscles disintegrating, veins shrivelling out into strings that crumbled into ash, until there was nothing but a still heart where once a boy lay—

Dean shook him awake, frantic, desperate, and Dad was nowhere to be found. He buried his face into Dean's shoulder and gritted his teeth and tried not to cry until he fell asleep again.

0-0-

Now the beating woke him up. He was half awake when the door slammed open, and Dad stumbled in, and Dean rushed out of bed, and the shouting was blurred to his muffled ears.

He blinked open blurry eyes and twitched heavy limbs and woke up completely.

Dean and Dad, standing in the middle of the room, facing each other, Dad towering and screaming with drunken movements that showed he'd gone to a bar, again, and it wasn't Dad's fault it was stress and rage and love and Sam shouldn't hate him for it but sometimes it was really, really hard—Sam gulped and tried to hide his face in the pillow, and Dad—

"You fucking stupid bastard, you got Sammy possessed, that's all on  _you_ and now you ain't never coming on hunts till I can fucking  _trust you again_ —"

"I'm sorry, Dad," came Dean's voice, cool, calm, steady. "I'm sorry."

"You don't get to apologise." Dad snarled, and punched Dean in the chest. Sam couldn't help but stare as Dean, Dean who had protected him and loved him and was his amazing big brother, Dean crumpled like a rag doll with strings cut. He watched as Dad advanced (not Dad, this creature who had  _possessed_ Dad) and kicked the crumpled rag doll, which didn't make a noise, just jerked slightly. And Dad kicked again. And again. And again.

Sam didn't know how long it lasted, the thuds on flesh that were terrifyingly familiar, a routine re enacted time and time again. He couldn't help the hot tears that dribbled down the face, or the pathetic helplessness that overwhelmed him until he passed out again, into a shuddering, half awake sleep.

-0-0

"Up, Sammy." Dad said gruffly, pulling back his sheets and opening the curtains wide. Dean was in the bathroom if the sound of the shower was indicating anything. "Okay. I've already told Dean this, but this is what's happening; I got a hunt with Gordon up north, and it's gonna take about two weeks. I've left cash for groceries and school supplies. Phone for emergencies. You boys start school later today."

"School?" Sam enquired, mumbling. "Stone... Stone High?"

"Stonebridge High." Dad corrected.

"Gonna stay there for a long time?"

"Yes."

"'Kay," Sam said sleepily, and turned his head back into his pillow.

"I said  _up!_ " Dad shouted, and his fist came hard down on Sam's right shoulder. Sam yelped and scrambled back, half falling out of the bed and Dad stared at him hard. "Be good, and listen to Dean." he said finally, then moved to pick up his bag and the keys, and left with a slam of the motel door.

Sam took a deep breath. He didn't hate his father, he told himself.

He tried to pretend he wasn't lying.

-0-0

"You okay, Sammy?" Dean asked, drying his hair with a towel, legs up on the bed and shirt falling down to show a torso of black and blue and green.

"I woke up," Sam mumbled, collapsing on the bed next to Dean. "I saw Dad beating you."

"Hey, shh," Dean pulled him into a quick hug and Sam realised he was crying. "It's okay."

"I had a nightmare, Dean." Sam said, leaning into the warm, safe weight of his brother. "I don't—I don't want—"

"Hey, calm down. It's fine. Everything's fine. He didn't hurt you, did he?"

"He punched my shoulder when you were in the shower." Sam said. His fractured left arm was in a cast so he shrugged down his t shirt to show Dean the bruise. Dean let out a heavy breath and tried to smile at him.

"You definitely got an impressive set of injuries to show the girls, huh, Sammy?"

"Is that all you think about?" Sam tried to snark, backhanding his leftover tears.

"Um, no. I think about loads of different things. Girls, boys, oral, anal—"                                                      

"Ew, Dean!" Sam shouted, clapping his hands over his ears. "TMI, jeez!"

"Who even says TMI anymore?" Dean asked, amused.

"People who are cool. So obviously you'd know nothing about it."

"Ooh, that hurt, Sammy. Right there. Agonising." Dean clasped a hand over his heart and Sam scowled.

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

0-0-0

" _Dean._ "

"Mm..."

"You just stepped on my foot!"

"You shoved me, bitch."

"That was on accident, jerk!"

"Still."

"Still what?"

"Still shouldn't have shoved me."

" _Agh!"_

"Ow! What was that for?"

"Payback!"

"For what?"

"Stepping on my foot!"

"You can't have payback for payback, dude."

"Stepping on my foot was not payback! You can't payback an accident!"

"Says who?"

"Says everyone!"

"I bet if you asked any random stranger they wouldn't agree."

"Yeah, they would."

"Go on then."

"No, you have to."

"Why do I have to?"

"Because you were the one that bet that any random stranger wouldn't agree. So now you have to back up that claim."

"No, you're the one protesting my claim. So now you have to go and prove it isn't true."

"I'm not going to do that and you know it, jerk."

"Sammy, can you please just stop arguing. I've had a real long day and you're just making it worse."

"You're a guilt tripping lying idiot son of a bitch."

"Sammy."

"What?"

"You can't use 'son of a bitch' against your own brother."

"Oh my god I hate you."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

0-0-0

Stonebridge High was two squat buildings joined by a field with a track running round it. The school was a half an hour walk away from where they lived, which meant they had to wake up at half six to get ready, check the salt lines and have breakfast before actually starting the walk. And apparently it rained every single day there because Dean and Sam entered school dripping wet and the weather forecast gave a dismal estimation of tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and well shit they were going to have to invest in raincoats, even if that did cost half their grocery money.

The receptionist was a woman in her late twenties with a tight dress and bronze curls, who looked up through fake eyelashes at them and pushed over two timetables and told them to ask around for directions to their first class.

"You good?" Dean asked, when the bell went and the congealed mixes of students transformed into streams of fast moving legs and stuck out elbows.

"Yup," Sam nodded, pulling the straps of his backpack up with his left arm hanging awkwardly in front of him. "I've got IT first."

"Alright, have fun." Dean ruffled his hair. "Meet outside the school gates after school, alright? If I'm not there, phone me."

"'Kay."

"You've got lunch, right? I did buy you a sandwich, didn't I?"

" _Yes._ " Sam rolled his eyes. "We have to go. Come on, Dean."

"Alright. Well. Don't bang your cast, okay?"

" _Okay,"_

"You only have a week till it comes off—"

"Really?"

"What? Oh, yeah... the demon possessing you made it heal faster. Dad thinks. I don't know. And... if anyone asks... say you fell off your bike."

"Okay,  _bye_ Dean," Sam told him, now really exasperated. Dean smirked at him and then turned to survey the crowds and snag a pretty brunette towards him. He said something to her in a low voice and showed his timetable. She blushed and grinned and they walked off together while Sam leaned against the wall and rolled his eyes.

Um. Well. Room 48 was probably... somewhere... upstairs? And it was presumably a computer lab?

"Hi." A boy stopped in front of him, cocked a hip, grinned. Sam scanned; slicked hair, bright eyes, slim frame, around Sam's age. "I'm Gabriel Novak. You're new, right?"

"How'd you know that?" Sam asked.

"I know everyone in this school." Gabriel dismissed. "And I don't know you, so you must be new. Heh that rhymed. Anyway. Your name is..."

"Sam Winchester." Sam smiled. "And I don't 'spose you know where room 48 is..."

"Hey, we have the same classes!" Gabriel grinned. He had somehow snatched the timetable from Sam's hands and pulled his own out, comparing the two with them held next to each other. "It's like fate decided we were to be best friends."

Sam raised his eyebrows but couldn't help smiling. "Best friends? I got the distinct feeling you are my long lost sibling."

"I have nine siblings, seven of whom I loathe with all my being." Gabriel deadpanned. "What we have is more profound than that."

" _Nine,_ " Sam whistled. "...wow."

"Tell me about it!" Gabriel grabbed Sam's good wrist and started threading them expertly through the school corridors and bulky human obstacles, pausing to exchange high fives or back slaps or smiles with a number of random students. "Now, see, we have Mr Whitehall first, who is the most obnoxious IT teacher you will ever come across in your long and prosperous career at Stonebridge High, but thankfully is also half blind and will not notice if I swap beautiful but airheaded Amelia Stewart for beautiful but freakishly tall you."

"...okay, then. But what if I don't want to sit next to you?"

"I'm not sure who gave you the illusion you had a choice."

Sam laughed and conceded.

Gabriel steered him past the school library and down a sharp left, the former of which Sam noted for future reference. "You can also probably sneak in without having to do the new kid speech. Unless you like the new kid speech. Do you like the new kid speech?"

"I  _hate_ the new kid speech." Sam declared vehemently.

"I knew we were alike souls!"

"...because we both dislike the new kid speech? Have you ever had to do the new kid speech?"

Gabriel looked contrite. They turned left and started walking up a set of wooden stairs. "Well. No. But I dislike it on your behalf." They arrived in front of room 48, which was indeed a computer lab, and Gabriel bit his lip. "...we may be late. I'm sorry, sasquatch, you're going to have to do the new kid speech."

"Sasquatch?" Sam called after his new friend as Gabriel swung into the room. He followed after and closed the door, rolling his eyes.

"Sorry sir I had to guide the new kid I'm really sorry, it's just that he's injured so we had to take a bit longer—"

"That's fine, Gabriel," said the teacher. Sam stood awkwardly, trying to avoid looking at his new class, and stared instead at the shoes of his teacher. "Go and sit down. And you—must be Sam, correct?"

"Yeah." Sam mumbled.

He was  _not_ a sasquatch.

"Would you like to tell the class a bit about yourself?"

"Sure," Sam breathed out and turned to face his class, who thankfully seemed to be engrossed more in the obvious wonders of their monitors then the new kid in front of him. "Uh, I just moved here from LA, with my brother... who also goes here. And, I dislike bike riding, a phenomenon that happened after I fractured my arm." That got a few chuckles. Mr... Whitehead, was it? Mr Whitehead directed him to a seat near the back of the classroom, and started droning on about something that had happened last lesson while Sam looked around for Gabriel and thought on the fact about he very distinctly did not resemble a sasquatch.

In any way, form, or shape.

Or height.

Gabriel was talking low and fast to a pretty girl he was sitting next to at the back of the computers, hands moving wide and expressively. He clasped them together and looked up at her with a pout. Sam saw rather than heard her breathy little laugh as she tossed her hair, scooped up her handbag and made her way over to Sam.

"Are we swapping or what, new kid?" she asked with perfect raised eyebrows. Sam picked up his own bag and snatched a glance towards Mr Whitehead, who was engrossed in his flickering PowerPoint, and made his way over to Gabriel. "I'm not a sasquatch." He told his friend, who looked delighted.

"Sasquatch! We have a nickname!"

"Asshole," Sam scowled, turning on his own monitor. Gabriel was on Google so he clicked on the icon and waited while it loaded up, excruciatingly slowly.

"So," Gabriel leaned forwards on one arm to face him fully. "You got the broken arm from falling off a bike?"

"Fractured," Sam corrected. "And yeah."

"How long till the cast comes off?"

"A week. About." Gabriel looked vaguely satisfied and turned to his monitor. "Wait, what exactly does Mr Whitehead want us to do?"

"Whitehall." Gabriel corrected. "We have to look at different websites and do a PowerPoint on their characteristics." He typed something into the top bar and pressed enter, waiting while it loaded. The page flickered and then popped up a security warning that the site was blocked. Gabriel scowled at it. "Stupid tight ass restrictive school—"

"What are you trying to get on?" Sam asked, leaning over.

"4chan." Gabriel looked pleased with himself.

"What? Seriously? Ew. That's—seriously?"

"Yup." Gabriel nodded. "It's a very important piece of the internet, so I should include it if I want to provide a proper comprehensive description of different sites."

"Who the hell said it was an important piece of the internet?"

"Urban dictionary."

"I'm not going to grace that with a response."

They sat, working, for a few minutes.

"Did you say you had a brother?"

"Yeah, Dean. Three years older than me."

"Huh, he's in the same year as one of my brothers. Castiel."

"Is that one of the seven you hate or the two you don't?"

Gabriel grinned. "Cas? No, he's awesome. I love Cas. He speaks weirdly and has no idea how to act with human beings and won't wear anything without this trench coat, but he's awesome."

"Sounds about as weird as you." Sam mused, nodding along. Gabriel shoved him lightly on the shoulder, and Sam almost fell of his chair as he groaned in pain, squeezing his eyes shut as the already painful bruise inflamed into agony.

"Sasquatch?" Gabriel asked, worried. "What happened? Are you okay?"

Sam gritted his teeth and tried to nod. He tried to suck in air and started choking instead, and curled into himself in pain until it stopped. "I'm good," he breathed out finally, looking round to see if anyone was staring—they weren't. "Just—I hurt my shoulder, when I fell off. My bike. As well. Just a bruise, it's fine."

Gabriel frowned and Sam could see the calculations going on in his mind—if the fractured arm was going to be healed in a week, that meant it happened around five weeks ago, and if the bruised shoulder had happened at the same time it should have been healed by now.

Gabriel looked to meet Sam's eyes and he looked away.

They spent another awkward few minutes in silence, Sam typing slowly with only one hand, the quiet wave of classmates' chatter washing over them. Gabriel evidently couldn't last that long.

"Tell me about your brother. Dean, right?"

"Yah. Um. Well, he's awesome. Most of the time. He's a complete womanizer and loves cars, and he's pretty much the best big brother you could ask for."

"Sounds cool." There was something strange in Gabriel's smile. Sam stared, trying to discern it—there was something  _off,_ just beneath the surface, something unearthly and discordant. "Maybe he and Cas will be friends."

"Maybe," Sam hummed, and shook his head at himself. He had been possessed for a week, which was sure to do freaky things to his head. He was just seeing things.

-0-0-0

They had art third, which everyone else spent completing sculptures which Gabriel had finished and the art teacher had told Sam he shouldn't start, so the two sat at the back of the class and chatted while they doodled on Sam's physics textbook. Gabriel had decided that the second hand book was so rundown they were officially allowed to draw on it all and not worry about the moral side of desecrating books, and since Sam agreed with this statement they were currently drawing a stack of stickmen who were trying to climb up the title page to reach the top. Gabriel finished the heads and Sam started on little pinpricked eyes.

...they weren't amazing at drawing.

"So. LA?"

"Yup." Sam nodded, and searched for a red pen to start on bow ties.

"What was it like?"

Sam shrugged. He didn't actually remember much of LA; they'd stopped there for a few weeks last year, but the ID Dad had used to enrol them here had last been used at LA so they needed to pretend they were from there. "Loud. Noisy."

"Were you born there?"

Sam laughed. "No. We only stayed there a little while, actually. Before that we were in... ah, I think it was Oregon, actually. Near here. We stayed there for a couple of months."

"So you move a lot?" Gabriel was leaning forwards, gaze intense. Sam looked up and frowned slightly before swapping for a black pen to draw top hats.

"You could say that."

"How long do you think you're going to stay here?"

Sam grinned wide. "A long time. My dad wants to settle here for a bit, I think."

"Cool." Gabriel grinned back and picked up Sam's red pen to give each stickman in the lopsided tower exaggerated lips.

"Hey, that looks weird." Sam scowled, scribbling out the lips.

"Yeah? Well I didn't complain about your freaky top hats."

"You  _did not_ just insult my top hats."

Gabriel raised his eyebrows. "They are abominable, deficient, fallacious, erroneous, sub standard, atrocious. They make my eyes implode, they bring horror to a casual viewer, they are horrific and scarring and hideous—"

"Show off." Sam scowled. "What did you do, memorize the thesaurus?"

"I'm just naturally that clever."

"Jerk."

"Whatever," Gabriel returned, and Sam realised with a slight start he wasn't talking to Dean.

0-0-0

At lunch, it turned out Gabriel was right with his earlier musing that maybe Dean and Castiel would be friends. From what Gabriel had told Sam, their two older brothers had seemed like complete opposites but when they walked into the canteen and there, in the left back corner, on a table alone, was Dean, talking to a boy with stunningly vibrant blue eyes and short cropped hair, which Sam recognised as Castiel only through his bulky trench coat.

It was one... big... trench coat.

Gabriel smirked at the new development and Sam introduced Dean, who grunted hello as they sat down. He was absorbed in his pie, which Sam had no idea where he had gotten from—what the hell was he thinking. Dean always had pie. Stupid little things like being in a school that didn't have pie wouldn't stop him.

"Cas," Gabriel asked curiously. "Where are your friends?"

"Around," Cas said mysteriously. Gabriel rolled his eyes.

"So how are you liking Stonebridge High so far, Sam?" Cas asked politely. Sam shifted and pulled his lunch out of his bag, which was a bacon and cheese sandwich.

"It's pretty good," Sam nodded along. Gabriel smirked and took a bite of his own wrap. "I mean. The same as most schools. 'Part from Gabriel."

"What, you've never before been to a school that housed such a magnificent specimen of a human being?" Gabriel laughed. Sam rolled his eyes.

"No, I've never been a school where I've had such an annoying kid latch onto me so fast."

"Me latch onto you? You mean you latched onto me."

"No, it was definitely you latching onto me." Sam told him, amused. "There's no shame in loving me, Gabriel. Most of the world has fallen to my charms."

Gabriel scowled while Dean and Cas laughed. Sam bit into his sandwich and scowled. It was stale.

"Dean, why'd you buy me a stale sandwich?" he grumbled.

"It was reduced." Dean shrugged. "I'm eating stale pie. Suck it up."

"Wait," Gabriel interrupted. "You couldn't fork out a few extra dollars for a fresh sandwich?"

There was a short, awkward silence. "No," Dean answered. Sam gulped and looked around, settling on staring that the ceiling and admiring the way that certain patches of beige blended not so seamlessly into the general whitewash.

"How did you break your arm, Sam?" Castiel asked, breaking the silence.

"It's not broken, it's just fractured. I fell down off my bike." Sam answered back easily. "It's all Dean's freaking fault for making me ride the bike."

"I didn't make you," Dean rolled his eyes, falling easily into the lie. "You  _wanted_ to."

"Because you refused to walk!"

"Well, you should've just stayed home."

Dean smiled, Sam scowled, Cas laughed slowly, and Gabriel had old eyes in a young face and a way of staring that felt like he knew they were lying.

He successfully from there steered the conversation into safer areas, and then he and Gabriel left to check out the library, and then the bell went for music. An hour of banging drums one handed, tuneless and clueless, and finally physics, in which Gabriel and Sam sat at the back and chewed gum and tried to see who could lick their nose. Physics finished and Sam waved goodbye, left with Dean, walked back to their motel room. Sam watched reruns of Friends and talked lazily on the phone to Gabriel while Dean went out to see if anyone was hiring—they weren't—and splashed on Pot Noodles and when Dean came home Dad called.

He told them about the nest he and Gordon were hunting, and Sam wished him luck, and Dean had a long conversation on the best way to fight a vampire. And Dean went very quiet, and Dad said something like he was sorry,

(sorry doesn't heal bruises)

and Dean put it on speaker and Dad told them both he loved them, and call if they had any troubles.

Dean rewrapped Sam's ribs and Sam woke up at midnight, screaming.

But it was an okay day.


	2. Chapter 2

_**I tried so hard** _ _  
_ _**And got so far** _ _**  
** _ _**But in the end** _ _**  
** _ _**It doesn't even matter** _ _**  
** _ _**I had to fall** _ _**  
** _ _**To lose it all** _ _**  
** _ _**But in the end** _ _**  
** _ __**It doesn't even matter**

**-In the End, by Linkin Park**

"Dean? You awake?" Sam huddled his pyjama top closer around himself and shuffled on bare feet, standing next to the blanketed form of his brother. It was 2:13AM.

"Agh—what the fuck, Sammy? It's two in the morning!"

"No, it's thirteen minutes past two." Sam corrected. "So are you awake?"

"Well, I am now, obviously. Why the hell are you up?"

"Couldn't go to sleep," Sam replied pitifully.

"The things I do for you," Dean scowled, and yawned, then flipped up the corner of his blanket and shuffled along on the bed. "C'mon then, squirt. Mind the cast." Sam collapsed thankfully into the proffered space and squirmed in to lie in a ball against Dean's back. Dean sighed and shifted irritably, finally settling back to sleep, while Sam listened to the slow, steady beat of Dean's heart.

"Thanks," he mouthed against his brother's back. He fell asleep.

0-00-0-00-0-

At 4:35AM Sam stretched out, yawned, blinked open sleep cracked eyes, and rolled out of bed. He landed with a thump on the floor and groaned in pain. He took a second to breathe in deep and make sure his cast wasn't damaged, and then scrambled up, using the bed post for help, to waver like a drunkard and stare at still sleeping Dean.

He thought opening the curtains would wake Dean up, because that was what Dean always did to wake him up, but it was still dark outside so that didn't work at all. He wanted to switch on the light but that was over six steps away so he conceded and slumped back onto the bed. "Sammy?" groaned Dean. "Tell me you're not awake. Tell me I'm imagining things."

"No, we have to get ready for school, Dean." Sam was happy because Dean was awake and he hadn't even needed to pour water on him, which would probably make Dean sit up bolt straight and punch him, because that was the same reaction he had provoked all the other times.

"Oh my god Sammy it's half  _four,_ are you out of your freaking mind—"

"It's  _past_ half four," Sam corrected, affronted. "And we have to get up early for school, remember?"

"Six o' clock early, not half four!"

"It's not half four," Sam scowled, as the red digital numbers changed to 4:36AM. "And now it's even more not half four."

"If you don't go back to sleep I'm going to knock you out."

"Fine," Sam grumbled, closed his eyes, fumbled back to his old position and went to sleep.

Dean stared at his brother in disbelief. "You have no idea how much I hate you sometimes." he said. Sam didn't hear.

0-0-0-0-0-0-

"Hey, Sam, dude, time to get up."

"Leave me alone," Sam grumbled into Dean's pillow. He whimpered as Dean ripped the blanket off him but refused to wake up, choosing instead to huddle deeper into the pillow.

"Sammy," said Dean, very calmly. "You have been waking me up all night for no reason whatsoever. And now, when you have to get up for school, you refuse to wake up?"

Sam grunted affirmation and fell asleep, to a strange dream of chasing ducks in a white pond.

Dean sighed and walked over to their food bags. They had a couple of plastic bowls and spoons in there, which he took out and set on the table, as well as long-life semi-skimmed milk and not-yet-past-their-sell-by-date cornflakes. Sam was still asleep so he poured the milk and cereal into a bowl and stuck a spoon in, and then walked over to his brother. "Sammy, breakfast is ready. Up you get."

Sam snored exaggeratedly.

"That's not even funny." Dean told him. "Look, I'm going to have a shower. By the time I get out you will have had breakfast and be waiting to have your shower, and you will do all this without coffee."

"No coffee?!"

"Yeah, no coffee. You're fourteen years old, you can't be addicted to caffeine."

"Can too."

"Can't."

"Can  _too."_

"Sammy you are the most immature little brother I have and we are not doing this."

"Dean I'm the  _only_ little brother you have and I don't get why I can't have coffee."

"We haven't got any, okay? Now you gonna have breakfast?"

"Are you doing the thing where you ask me if I want to do something but you actually mean I don't have a choice?"

"Yes, bitch. Deal with it."

"Jerk," Sam huffed, and rubbed his eyes.

Dean went into the bathroom while Sam staggered out of bed. His knees weren't as bad as they had been yesterday, but he washed down a couple of painkillers and slumped in front of the bowl of cereal to start eating breakfast. When it was finished he put his head down on the table and fell asleep again.

-No. He had to...

Sam dragged his feet over to his still unpacked bags and rifled through for his towel and a change of clothes for the day. His recent growth spurt had made most things too small for him, so he settled on a pair of jeans that just fit and Dean's Led Zeppelin t-shirt that for some reason was crumpled at the bottom of his bag. He tripped over to the bathroom door and sat down in front of it, leaning his back against the painted wood and closing his eyes.

He didn't  _mean_ to fall asleep, but he hadn't had coffee, so...

The door swung back to reveal Dean, drying his hair with a towel. Sam, asleep, fell back onto his legs and Dean yelped. "Sam!" he scolded. "You know how totally useless you are?"

"You yelped," Sam giggled blearily, and stood up to go for a shower.

0-0-0-0-0-

It started raining when they stepped out to start walking to school, twenty minutes later. Sam looked up at the grey black sky and down at his thin cold t shirt and then sideways at Dean, and pulled a morose face, and tried to make his cast as visible as possible. Dean scowled and shrugged off his leather jacket, which Sam huddled into with a smile of thanks.

The rain wasn't heavy. It was droplets, the type so light they flung around in the slightest breeze and never actually seemed to hit the ground, instead intent on slamming into anyone stupid enough to be walking to school. This meant that running from doorstep to doorstep didn't work, because the rain just blew in there as much as it did out in the open, so when the brothers got to school they looked like so many drowned rats.

Sam had never seen a drowned rat, but he imagined they looked like them.

Actually, he had never imagined a drowned rat, either.

He gave the jacket back to Dean and was ambushed on the way to his locker by Gabriel. "Did you forget to take your clothes off in the shower?" his friend grimaced, falling in step.

"No, I walked to school."

"Oh," said Gabriel. He squinted at Sam. "Dude, are you okay?"

"Yeah," Sam yawned. "Why?"

"Well, you kinda literally have black circles under your eyes. Like literal black circles."

Sam rubbed at them, turning left to his locker. "Yeah, well. I kept waking up last night. Dean got so mad at me. And then he didn't give me coffee, so I'm basically screwed."

"A fellow caffeine addict?" Gabriel brightened. "Awesome! You wanna ditch and go get coffee from somewhere?"

"I'm not ditching on my second day at school," Sam admonished. He took out his keys and opened his locker, pulling out the books he needed and slamming it shut again.

"After school? My treat."

Sam grinned. "Sure." The first bell went, loud and shrill, and Sam winced as a headache he hadn't known was there ricocheted up a few notches. "What do we have first?"

"AP Chemistry, it's upstairs."

"Okay," Sam yawned again, and followed Gabriel quick step round the corridor and up the worn wood stairs, and his tired eyes glazed over and Gabriel shook him and said, "Sasquatch, wake up!"

"What?" Sam asked confusedly. Gabriel sighed.

"You really need a coffee." Sam coughed and yawned once again, nodding in affirmation. "What did you do last night, anyway?"

"Lotta nightmares," Sam told him, and then covered his mouth because he hadn't meant to say that. "Didn't mean to say that. Ignore me."

"No, it's fine," Gabriel said quietly. "You wanna talk about it?"

"Not really," Sam shrugged, and felt tears welling up in his throat. "S'just, you know. Shit happens."

"Well, I'm here," Gabriel said with a warm tilted smile and slung an arm around Sam's shoulders. Sam grinned weakly back and mused on the fact it felt like they had been friends for a lifetime, and then they entered AP Chemistry and had a kicking fight under the table and the teacher thought (with Gabriel's prompting) that it was Sam's fault and he almost got detention and he no longer felt that way.

0-0-0-0-0

Sam was bored.

They were in English, and the class had an exam, and because Sam was new he didn't have to do it, so he sat for the hour staring at the clock. It was an orange clock—not neon orange, just orange like... like a tangerine—and the hands were curvy and green, with little flowers on the ends, and the black numbers from twelve to one around the clock face were peeling delicately off. It hung from a nail which stuck out at a jagged angle from the plaster wall and was above a display about the importance of vocabulary. The second hand ticked excruciatingly slow, taunting Sam with its crawl from one number to the other, and no matter how hard he stared he could never catch the minute hand in action; but it moved, after a stretch, so he must be just blinking in the wrong moments.

He tapped his fingers on his cast in the tune of Eye of the Tiger which was stuck in his head because of Dean's obsession and soon got bored of that and started clicking his pen. He put it against the desk so every other time he clicked it the pen would spring a little in the air so he could snatch it and push it down again. Everyone soon started turning around and giving him irritated looks, so he stopped and returned to staring at the clock, which had barely changed at all.

He texted Gabriel;  _Gabriel is your phone on loud_

There was an electronic whistle from the other side of the room and Sam looked over in time to see his friend clamp his hand down on his pocket, embarrassed, and give the teacher an apologetic smile.

 _Guess it is ;)_ Sam texted next, sending the winky face to be obnoxious. Gabriel managed to put his phone on silent before it rung and looked at it under the table, rolling his eyes and turning his head to glare at Sam. Sam grinned at him before sending,  _I'm bored_

_**You are such a jerk** _

_Gabriel I'm bored_

_**I'm busy go away** _

_Gabriel_

_Gabriel don't leave me_

_GABRIEL_

_GAAABBBRRIIIEEEELLLL_

_G_

_A_

_B_

_R_

_I_

_E_

"Mr Winchester, phone away," informed the teacher with a pointed look. Sam mumbled an apology and slid back into his pocket, sighing to himself and leaning on his hand. This would be the perfect time to go to sleep and normally he would, but if he had nightmares...

The bell went, awakening him out of a half drowse with a start. Along with the rest of the class he jumped up and stuffed his pens into his bag, swinging it up onto his shoulder and weaving his way outside of the classroom to wait for Gabriel who was handing in his test paper. Gabriel slipped out to join him and raised an eyebrow. "Is your phone on loud. Really, sasquatch?"

"I was bored," Sam said only half apologetically. "Was the exam hard?"

"Not really," Gabriel shrugged. "On Romeo and Juliet which we've been doing for our whole lives, basically, so it was kind of predictable."

Sam twisted his mouth to the side. "Romeo and Juliet? Don't you do anything else?"

"We dabbled in Macbeth earlier this month, but that was it. Why?"

"All the schools I went to hardly ever did that," Sam shrugged. "Actually, maybe they did and I just wasn't there. Who knows."

Gabriel paused and looked thoughtful. "Did you like moving round schools a lot?"

"No, not really. We always moved too fast for me to make friends and I was behind on everything, because I never knew what we were going to do next. Dean almost got held back a year because of that and we had to stay in Ohio for five months so he could catch up."

"Woah, five months is a long time?"

"Yup," Sam nodded.

"What does your dad work as again?"

"Mechanic," Sam answered without hesitation, and at Gabriel's questioning look clarified; "Specialist mechanic."

"Specialist mechanic," Gabriel repeated dubiously. "He fixes... special cars?"

"Something like that." Sam nodded. And to impress his friend; "When money gets short we go hustling, though."

"Hustling." Gabriel grinned. "Like, poker hustling?"

"Yup. Me and Dean have this thing, where we pretend to be really posh kids with loads to blow and really crap at playing, and all the alkies come up to get a piece and Dean wins all their money and then we gotta run or they'll beat us up," Sam said, grinning widely. Gabriel had a strange expression on his face so he hastily added, "But we only do it sometimes, if Dad gets really drunk and he can't," and Gabriel just looked sad and hesitant and Sam said impatiently, and somewhat uncomfortably, "What?"

"Nothing," Gabriel replied, shaking his head and putting his hands in his pockets. "We gotta go to maths. Come on."

"Alright," said Sam, and followed Gabriel to Maths and neither said anything else on the subject.

0-0-0-0-0

Dean met Castiel's strange friends in a slow drizzle;

In the morning, coming in soaked from the walk there with the leather jacket he had leant Sammy bundled miserably over one arm, a girl with heavy black eyeliner, a tank top and short skirt (despite the weather) had come up to him, looked him up and down, whistled lowly and then loudly gave thanks for white shirts that went see through when wet. Dean had raised his eyebrows and in turn scanned the girl on principle, going up long legs to curved hips to a slim waist to straight tanned arms to a lipsticked smile and long lashes eyes and plucked darkened brows and waves of smooth hair, and Castiel had arrived and told the girl sternly to leave Dean alone. She had smiled, draped herself over Castiel and kissed him good morning, and was pushed away by Dean's new flustered friend and then had sauntered off.

"Jo says she keeps trying to seduce me," Castiel said, somewhat mournfully. "I attempt to make sure she knows she is but a friend and yet she is persistent in her attempts."

"Right," Dean had nodded, pursing his lips. "What's her name?"

"Meg. Most likely she will eat lunch with us. No matter where I run, she always finds me."

"...right," Dean had repeated worriedly.

Aforementioned Jo he met next. She had blonde hair and a denim jacket, and when Dean tried flirting she took out a knife and started flipping it up and down. In IT he met Ash, who half joined in his and Castiel's conversation while unashamedly hacking the school network, and who had one of the craziest hairstyles Dean had ever seen (which was saying something, because he had seen Sammy high on painkillers and chopping off his hair with a kitchen knife) which when asked was apparently described as. 'Party up front, business down back,' and what the fuck did that even mean?

Becky was in English Lit and read one page of her 'fanfiction' before booed away by an apparently weary class. She came over to Cas and Dean halfway through the lesson, sitting on the desk and ranting about the injustice of life and the inevitability of something called Sterek, long legs in patterned tights swinging off the side of their desk while Dean half listened bemused and a little frightened.

"Dean," said Cas near the end of English. "Are you feeling well?"

"What? Yeah. Why?"

"I believe the word is 'spacey'."

"Yeah, maybe. Sammy kept waking me up all night and then he wouldn't stay awake when we were going to school. Most annoying little brother ever."

"I don't know about that," Cas mused. "Gabriel has been obsessed with practical jokes ever since he turned three. The number of times he has spent days collecting spiders and putting them in I or my brothers beds is not to bear thinking about."

"Okay, I can be grateful Sammy doesn't do that," Dean said with a wry grin.

At lunch Becky, Ash and Meg came and sat with them at the back of the canteen, and they were soon joined by a dark skinned boy with curly black hair called James. Seemingly the only normal one out of the group, he introduced himself with a flash of white teeth and high fived Dean for helping them one up the girls in numbers of the group, and then fell to talking with him about their shared love of old rock. Cas was completely lost, so Dean took out his phone and played Led Zeppelins' Greatest Hits quiet enough so the teacher wouldn't hear.

"Hey," James said as the bell went for lunch. "Want to go out with us this Friday night?"

"Sure," Dean shrugged. "Should I bring fake ID?"

James flashed him white teeth again. "Always."

0-0-0—00-

"So where do you normally sit at lunch?" Sam asked curiously as they walked to the canteen.

"Ah, I flit round the groups," Gabriel shrugged. "When Cas isn't with his weird friends I sit with him, but most of the time he is so I got my pick of the guys in our year. You can choose today, if you like."

"The options are..."

"Well, you got your ROTC guys, preps, J.V. jocks, Asian nerds, cool Asians, varsity jocks, unfriendly black—"

"Dude." Sam scowled. "Do not quote Mean Girls at me. Ever. Again."

"Boo, you whore!" Gabriel grinned.

"I am seriously trying to remember why I'm friends with you again."

"Ouch, sasquatch. Ouch."

"Shut up. Come on. I'm hungry. Who are we sitting with?"

"I dunno—nerds, jocks and cheerleaders, the jokers, or a mix of any of them. You pick."

"Can we go eat on the bleachers?"

"If you don't mind the occasional senior couple eating each other's faces off at the far ends."

"Um. I don't?"

Gabriel went with it easily, "I'm always good for live porn as well, no worries."

Sam rolled his eyes.

They walked out to the bleachers and sat under the sheltered area, which the rain earlier that day hadn't got to as much. There was indeed a senior couple eating each-other's faces at the far end, and a group of druggies shooting up right across the field, but the weather was too frigid for anyone else to venture out that particular day. Sam opened his bag and crossed his legs and Gabriel pulled out his lunch, a bagel wrapped in foil. They ate in silence for a few moments and then Gabriel produced a bag of popcorn.

"Think fast!" he shouted at Sam, throwing a handful of popcorn at him. Hands full, Sam instinctively opened his mouth and caught most of the popcorn while the rest bounced off his t shirt. Sam scowled, chewed, swallowed and lunged forwards to grab his own handful, not even bothering to say anything before launching it at Gabriel.

His friend was less lucky and ducked his head so most of it stuck in his curly brown hair. Sam snorted and took another handful to eat for himself.

"So," Gabriel said, picking popcorn from his hair. "Still on for coffee after school?"

"If you're still paying," Sam nodded. "I'll pay you back tomorrow because I don't have anything with me."

"No, I told you, it's my treat." Gabriel smiled. And then said carefully, slowly, probing, as if he was testing something; "It will be like a date."

"Yeah, except we're not gay." Sam laughed, and thought he saw Gabriel's face fall minutely. His friend was all smiles another second later and grinned lasciviously. "How do you know I'm not secretly a girl?"

"Because you don't have breasts?" Sam ventured.

"They're growing," Gabriel said obstinately, looking down hard at his chest.

"You have a guy's name."

"Plenty of girls have guy's names."

"I don't know!" Sam threw his arms up. "How do I know you're not secretly a girl?"

"You don't," Gabriel smirked, and sauntered away.

-0-0-0-0-0

He came back five minutes later (in which Sam sat lonely on the bleachers, long legs spread out, trying hard to avoid looking at the senior couple eating each-other's faces off and even harder not to feel too much like an abandoned puppy) with two cookies in hand, munching a third obnoxiously as he strode back. He offered one to Sam. "I took them from Food Tech," he smiled. "They're good. Want one?"

"Gabriel, that's stealing," Sam scolded, and took one anyway and ate it because Gabriel was right, they were pretty good.

They went to Drama when lunch ended and were put in separate groups. Sam was with a girl called Haley and a boy whose name he hadn't quite caught and was too nervous to ask for again after they had been working together for over half an hour, creating a comedic stretch to do with a waiter and a restaurant. At the end of the lesson the teacher picked the best to present to the class which was coincidentally Sam's group, so they awkwardly fumbled their way through lines in front of a snickering class.

A phone whistled from Sam's pocket. He blushed and covered with a cough, and pretended to serve spinach to Haley—his phone whistled again. Everyone was staring at him by now, and it whistled five more times in quick succession before the teacher turned and said tightly, "New boy, phone on silent, please. We don't tolerate that sort of behaviour at Stonebridge."

"Sorry," Sam mumbled and his phone whistled again. The class laughed and he took it out to put in on vibrate with hurried fingers, not bothering to check the notifications as he stuffed it back into his pocket and finished the acting.

At the end of class Gabriel came up to him and smirked. Sam sighed in realisation and checked the notifications, which were text messages, from Gabriel;

_**Sasquatch** _

_**Oh lol your phones on loud as well** _

_**Do you know what this is called** _

_**Sasquatch** _

_**Sasquatch do you know what this is called** _

_**PAYBACK** _

_**PAYBACK BITCH** _

"I hate you, Gabriel."

"Love you too.  _Brah."_

0-0-0-0-0

"Dean!" Sam ran up to him at the gates after school, his older brother leaning against the wall and talking idly to Cas and another, dark skinned boy Sam didn't know. He skidded to a stop in front of the trio. "Can I go out for coffee with Gabriel?"

Dean looked at him, smiled, turned to the boy Sam didn't know and said, "This is my little brother, Sammy."

"Sam," he corrected. "Well? Can I? He's paying."

"Be back before half six," Dean told him absentmindedly and Sam jerked his head in a nod. "Bye, Sammy."

"Bye," said Sam, not bothering to correct him this time, and hugged his brother quickly before turning and jogging back to where Gabriel was waiting. "'Kay, I can go."

"Awesome," said Gabriel. "You good for a walk? It's about ten minutes uphill from here."

"Sure," Sam nodded. They joined the crowds of students walking out of school and turned left, Sam loping next to a shorter Gabriel up the quiet road. "So we going to a Starbucks, then?"

Gabriel looked mildly horrified. "I would never go anywhere as mainstream as Starbucks. No, it's a hole-in-the-wall cafe called Scelus Populi Mei, they sell the best caramel cappuccino on the entire  _planet—_ "

"Why're they called People's Rebellion?" Sam frowned.

"It's an ironic thing, I don't really know," Gabriel shrugged. "Wait. What. You know Latin?"

"Bits," Sam said, shifting uncomfortably. He had  _not_ meant to reveal that.

"You, my friend, now officially have  _hidden depths._ "

More than you know, Sam wanted to say. Much more than you know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU PEOPLE ARE THE NICEST EVER I'M SO SORRY I DIDN'T UPDATE EARLIER-- do I still get cookies?


	3. Chapter 3

**This is the first scene of an act** **  
** **With my own hand stuck in my back** **  
** **Around here the puppet is the puppeteer** **  
** **And I was down for the proverbial count**

**...**   **And now my life has become a circus** **  
** **In the center ring, I'm a crying clown** **  
** **It's a little too exciting on the trapeze** **  
** **When you swing with your eyes closed to the ground** **  
** **And pain can feel like a boomerang** **  
** **You close your eyes it comes back again**

**-Seeing Sound, by Bayside**

_Scelus Populi Mei_ was a hunter's cafe.

Sam knew this from the knives on the wall that were not purely ornamental, from the rug by the counter positioned awkwardly and clashing with the general decor of the place, probably to hide a not yet cleaned bloodstain; he knew this from the devil's traps carved everywhere, from the lines of salt by the windows and the door, and most of all from the group of leather clothed scarred men talking gruffly with strained faces and cups of steaming coffee.

The owners of the cafe was a couple who walked with smiles and bulges at their hip. Sam breathed a sigh of relief because he didn't know them, so they probably wouldn't have a problem with Dad (hunters always had a problem with Dad) and greeted Gabriel cordially, like old friends. The man was Shane and the woman was Tina and they ruffled Gabriel's hair and said, "Who's this, then?" to Sam.

"This is sasquatch," Gabriel introduced with a smirk.

"Sam," Sam corrected with a grin, shaking Shane's hand. He moved a safe distance away after that and touched the knife at his own hip just in case things got ugly (things always got ugly with hunters). Tina said to him, "So, are you new in town?"

"Yeah, I moved here from LA," Sam replied politely, settling down across from Gabriel at the black fringed table with a warding symbol carved into the middle of it. "This is a nice design," he said to Tine, testing.

"Old symbols of some sort, I don't know, it's Shane's thing," she laughed fondly. Sam saw something steel deep in her hazel eyes, and wrenched up his smile once more. "You want the usual, Gabriel?" she asked.

"Yes please," Gabriel said and rocked back on two legs of his chair like a little kid. "Sam wants it as well."

"Does Sam?" Tina said, raising her eyebrows. Sam was reminded of what he'd imagined his mother to be, that distant time when he used to daydream about her and Dean would tell him stories about her smile.

His chest hurt.

"Um. What is the usual?"

"Large cappuccino, no milk, one sugar, a million spoons of double cream and three spoons of single cream and chocolate sprinkles," Gabriel recited easily.

"Okay," Sam shrugged. It did sound delicious. It tasted delicious as well, and they finished their coffees with identical smudges of cream on their noses which Tina rubbed off with the back of her hand and a fond smile (she was very fond, Sam noticed, for a hunter) (huntress) and she ruffled Sam's hair as well when they left and told him to come back soon.

0-0-0-0-0-

A week passed. School went from strange and new to familiar. Sam and Dean looked up recipes and tried their hand at cooking, and Sam failed (Dean didn't). Dad called daily, to update them on the hunt, to ask how Sam was, to make sure they were okay, had they checked the salt lines? Was the warding right? Anyone giving trouble? They were good with funds? And to tell them he loved them, which always  _always_ made Sam think of Dean's now slowly fading bruises.

Gabriel and Sam texted the long hours after school and late into the night and woke each other up when they couldn't sleep and had coffee every other day at the hunter's cafe. Tina was the nicest person Sam had ever met but

He sometimes wondered why  _Gabriel_ (who had the perfect family) needed a mother figure

But he never asked.

Sam had been happy a lot of his life, because he had Dean, but this was a happiness so complete he thought he might burst from it.

-0-0-0-0-0

It didn't come to head that day, but.

Sam woke like this—

In the spotlight. It wasn't a spotlight it was a bright room with a light reflecting and reflecting and reflecting off a million mirrors and a million too white bright walls and he couldn't see beyond the laughing dignified disgusted faces of a shadowed crowd.

He was on a stage with iron bars and shackles

And everyone stared. And  _laughed,_ like this—

And Sam lifted up his arm, shoulder then elbow then wrist then fingers up and up and he looked to the side curiously because he never remembered  _telling_ his arm to move so why in hell was it moving? And he saw, with wooden carved eyeballs, an arm that was pierced through and the elbow, at the wrist, at the joints of his fingers, with gossamer bolts ascending up into the too bright too white ceiling. And now he looked down, to his hips and waist and knees and feet, all carved from wood or moulded plastic, with the same gossamer bolts pierced straight through and tied in neat little knots with red scarlet paint dribbling from the holes like fake blood

He was a puppet.

Sam's head jerked up, and his arms snapped back, and his smile grew so wide he felt the fabric it was made of  _split._ And then he was screaming, at the pain of being pierced through, at the pain of being at someone else's control, of having a body that was not his own but  _was,_ of being trapped in this masquerade of foolery.

The audience laughed.

The puppeteer made him run, hoisted upwards with a painful steel bolt inserted down his back, and his artificial breath came out in heavy scratches and his legs pulled and pushed and were lifted and thrown frantically forwards, and then there was a shadow. The shadow loomed. The audience gasped.

Sam was lifted up, all the strings tied inside him clenched together in one tight vengeful fist and pulled in a jerk  _up,_ and then he was smashed again the too bright too white wall and the scarlet paint was dripping and dripping and

dripping and the

audience laughed.

And then he woke up, all over again, screaming. Heavy hands shook him and someone was saying  _Sammy it's okay please wake up please it is all going to be okay,_ and he choked, and looked round wildly for his assailant and writhed out and  _ran._

Something caught him by the back of his shirt (Dean's shirt) and he whirled, letting fly frantic fists, hot tears streaming down his face (dribbling blue paint) but he was too small, too weak, too helpless, and soon was caught up in a mess of skinny limbs and pulled against someone's warm chest. "Sammy?" said the voice. "Are you with me?"

Sam quietened. "Dean?"

"Yeah, it's me, it's okay, you're okay—" a hand smoothed down his hair, he was pulled further into his brother, face still wet.

"I thought," Sam choked. "I thought that—"

"It's okay, I promise." Dean said, shushing him. "Everything is okay. You're okay. Understand?"

Sam wriggled up to push his face into Dean's shoulder, and he cried himself to sleep.

0—0-0-0-0-0-

Dean had a lapful of unconscious brother at 5am and this always had to happen to him, didn't it. He sighed and picked Sammy up, carrying him back over to his bed and putting him down softly in the middle of it. He covered him with a blanket, tucking it round his cast and legs and beneath his chin, and brushed Sam's hair down again with a careful push of his palm.

Sam whimpered in his sleep.

Dean backed away carefully, collapsing onto his own bed. He was deathly tired but there was no point trying to get back to sleep, not after that fiasco, and anyway it was school in an hour; how was he going to get through that? Coffee from Sam's new favourite cafe, he supposed, but then again he needed to save the money to get Sammy some new jeans and he couldn't afford to waste on frivolities.

God, Sammy. His little brother was deteriorating before his very eyes and Dean had no idea what to do. It was nothing he could fix, he knew; it was the demon, the fucking demon that had the nerve to possess Sam and mess up his entire fucking head. And Dean didn't know what to do because they never stuck around for this bit, never stuck around to see what happened to the victim after they got possessed.

-And now they were experiencing it firsthand.

He'd never really thought about it but now it was happening Dean could get it. Having something inside you, controlling you; what that would do to a person would stay with them for the rest of their lives. And it was all Dad's faul—

Goddamn no he wasn't mean to think like that. Dad was trying his best. He'd stopped Sammy from going on hunts now, hadn't he? He cared. He loved them. And obviously  _he_ was stressed, he had spent fifteen years dealing with the death of his wife and raising two boys with no help whatsoever; that was gonna put some weight on a guy. And if he took it out on Dean sometimes, well, that couldn't be helped.

And it wasn't him, anyway, it was the alcohol.

Sam groaned and rolled over. Dean froze, but he was still asleep, and looked peaceful enough.

It always twisted his stomach because there was going to be a day when Dean wasn't there for whatever reason and Dad came home angry at the world and drunk and stumbling and he was going to find  _Sammy._ And Dean didn't know how he was going to deal with that day. Sure, Sam got thumped occasionally, especially when he was mouthing off for his many (quickly growing) reasons, but Dad never laid into him like he did Dean—which was fine, perfect, better, even, but Dean  _knew_ that there was going to be the day and he was scared; of course, of course he was scared about Sammy, how he'd deal, if he'd be okay, but most of all he was scared what he himself would do because he might just  _kill_ his father if he ever

-and he was stopping that train of thought right there.

Castiel had texted him the other night. He wasn't exactly tech-savvy and Dean was forever having to explain his acronyms (though seriously, who in the twenty first century Western world did not know what  _lol_ mean) but it was nice all the same, and he could see Cas in his mind's eye, concentrating with that crease between his brows like he always got when he concentrated and those wonderful vibrant blue eyes waiting for Dean to reply and the light of his phone reflecting off his face and his brown hair sticking up in different directions and—

-he was stopping that train of thought, as well.

Dean sometimes imagined what it would be like to kiss Cas. He'd only ever kissed one guy before, ages ago. He imagined Castiel's lips would be soft and smooth, and he would lean in and—

_-goddamn!_

Dean shook the thoughts away and stumbled up. He might as well get to making breakfast, because they were out of cereal (and Mom always had said they should never skip breakfast or your entire day was  _cursed)_  and, well, Sammy deserved something nice to wake up to after a dream like that.

He didn't know what the dream was like, actually. He just knew that his little brother was screaming and he couldn't get him to stop and he never ever wanted to hear Sammy scream like that ever again, but he knew he would, and that it would be tomorrow night, because Sammy never got a break and the world was not fucking fair and he was going to make every single motherfucker that dared hurt Sammy rot in hell  _after_ he made pancakes.

0-0-0-00-

Sam woke up to pancakes.

 _Burnt_ pancakes.

"Dean, no, you didn't," he groaned.

"I did," Dean shrugged apologetically. Sam leaned up on his elbows to see his brother with a stack of pancakes in front of him (pancakes or a pile of ash, Sam wasn't completely sure) and a full mouth. "They're not that bad." Dean defended, rolling his eyes at Sam's look.

Sam pulled himself out of bed and stumbled over to the table, falling boneless into a chair and gingerly poking at the stack. He grabbed the half empty bottle of syrup (3 for 1) and squeezed it over the top pancake, covering every inch in the golden liquid. He pulled a bit off and tried it. "Not bad," he nodded to Dean. "If you get past the taste of ash."

"Yeah, whatever." Dean snorted. "At least I tried, which is more than you can say."

"I made pie," Sam said, astonished and angry.

Dean squinted at him. "Wait, are you referring to the hunk of cow covered in flour I found dripping in the oven?"

"It was in a pie dish."

"...so if I put an apple in a pie dish then it's a pie?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Sam scoffed. "You have to cover it in flour."

Dean shook his head and took another pancake, following Sam's lead with a gratuitous amount of syrup. "You're ridiculous."

"No,  _you_ are."

"Dude, I'm practically eighteen, I am not doing this."

"You're conceding defeat, and you are  _not_ practically eighteen."

"Give or take a few months," Dean shrugged.

"A few  _years._ "

"Seriously?"

"Fine, a few months. But that is a long time."

"Not really."

"Yeah, it is."

"No, not really."

Sam scowled and took the last pancake. They ate in silence for another few minutes, and then Dean turned to Sam with a serious expression on his face. "Dude, we gotta talk."

Sam squirmed. "'Bout last night?"

"This morning," Dean said with a flash of a smile. "But yeah. That."

"I'm sorry," Sam said quietly.

Dean sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair. Sam looked at him and saw the creases on his face and the bags under his eyes and felt guilt well hot and dark in his stomach. "It's not your fault, Sammy. If anything , it's mine. I let that bastard possess you."

"What? No, you didn't." Sam scowled. "That was my fault. I should've been more careful. Don't be stupid, you had nothing to do with it."

"Yeah, whatever." Dean said. "Point is, it happened, and now you're all messed up about it and. Sammy. This isn't working."

"What isn't working," Sam mumbled, not really a question.

"You wake up screaming practically every night, man. And today—you didn't know who I was, you just  _ran._ How is that working?"

"So what do you want to do about it?" Sam said, not daring to look up.

"I was thinking—" Dean hesitated. "Maybe you should get some help. Talk to someone professional about it."

"No!" Sam said, bolt upright. "I'm not crazy! I don't need a shrink!"

"I didn't say that," Dean soothed, making a calming motion with his hands. "Just to talk. To talk it out."

"What, I was possessed by a demon and now I feel angsty about it how can you help me, yeah, like anyone's gonna even _believe_ me."

"I could ask Dad. See if he knows any hunter licensed types. I'm sure there's some."

"We are not telling Dad about this." Sam said through gritted teeth. "We can't tell Dad."

"Look, Sam—"

"No, don't, please." Sam begged. "I'll sort it out, I promise. Please just forget about it. I'll make sure you don't get waken up about it."

"No, Sammy, it's not me I'm worried about. I'll stay up as long as I have to if it makes you feel better. I just want you to be okay."

"I'll sort it out," Sam said, lip wobbling, obstinate. "I  _will._ "

Dean closed his eyes for a second. "I didn't mean it like that, Sam. I'm gonna help you."

"I'm going to have a shower," Sam said, getting up.

"Just think about it, Sammy," Dean said, sounding painfully exhausted. The guilt in Sam's stomach wrapped up around his heart and wrenched it as he slammed the bathroom door behind him, and when he closed his eyes he could feel the heat behind them.

He was going to fix this. He  _was._

0-0-0-0-0-0000-

"Sam, you any good at track?" Gabriel said at lunch. They were sitting with a group of popular kids that day, who had all high fived Gabriel and smiled at Sam like it was a regular occurrence.

"Depends on why you're asking," Sam said, staring into his macaroni cheese. Dean had given him money to buy school dinners that day and to be honest, it wasn't that bad.

"Well I want to try out for it, but I'm not going to unless you're coming as well, so."

"Um. Sure, I guess. When's the tryouts?"

"Next Tuesday, after school."

"Sounds good," Sam returned, and went back to moping in his pasta. The bell went for the end of lunch. He scowled up at the ceiling and shovelled quickly down the rest of his lunch because it had been four dollars and he wasn't letting that go to waste, and then he swung his bag over his shoulder from its place by his seat and Gabriel said, "Next?"

To which Sam replied automatically, used to his friend taking advantage of his near photographic memory; "You have Chemistry, I have Biology. See you in French," he finished hurriedly over his shoulder, and whirled away.

Sam was good at making friends, and had quite a few already at this particular school, but no one really close because he stuck to Gabriel for most part. He sat alone in the two classes he had without his best friend and in Biology he leaned tiredly on one hand and mechanically put down notes with the other. He looked up occasionally to watch the countdown to the end of the day on the small digital clock at the front of the room, but for most part let his gaze relax into a blur of peaceful boredom.

He met Gabriel outside French, and his friend took a moment to observe him seriously. "What?" Sam said irritably.

"What's wrong with you?" Gabriel said bluntly. "You've been miserable all day."

"Nothing." Sam said, and sighed. "I don't know. Dean. We had an argument this morning."

"Yeah? About what?" Gabriel said, as they trudged into French and took their usual seats at the desk in the far left corner. The teacher nodded at them and passed out dictionaries as they sat down.

"Stupid stuff," Sam shrugged. He put his head in his hands. "Agh, I don't know. He thinks I should go to a shrink."

"What?" Gabriel frowned. "Why?" And then, " _Oui, monsieur,_ " to Mr Lee, who had called his name out on the register.

"'Cause of my nightmares," Sam mumbled. He didn't tell Gabriel a lot about them, but, well, he came into school tired every day and gulped down coffee at  _Scelus Populi Mei_ like it was elixir, and he had to give his friend a reason for staying up at night so he said nightmares—but never specifics.

"Oh," said Gabriel. He paused. "They're really that bad?"

"Sam Winchester?" called the teacher.

"Yeah— _oui, monsieur._ " Sam said quickly.

"So?" Gabriel pressed.

Sam shrugged. "Sometimes. Yeah. They are."

"We have a school counsellor, you know."

"I know."

"And?"

"I don't need a shrink. I'm not going."

"And the nightmares?"

Sam shrugged. "I told him I'd sort it out."

"And will you?"

Sam shrugged again.

"Do you. Um. What are they about? The nightmares," Gabriel clarified.

Sam shifted uncomfortably. "I'd rather not talk about it, actually."

"Was it because of something recent?" Gabriel asked.

Sam hesitated and then realised that was safe. "Yeah."

"Something to do with why you're wearing a cast?" Gabriel pressed.

The corner of Sam's mouth twitched. "Well, it was a pretty horrific bike accident," he replied softly.

They left it at that.

0-0-0-0-0-0

After conjugating verbs (which Sam kept getting confused with Spanish, because his last school had focused on that) Sam went with Gabriel to _Scelus Populi Mei._ Tina and Shane caught them coming in and welcomed them with similar smiles, but the cafe was busy with a swell of (non-hunting) patrons so they didn't come over to talk just yet.

Sam settled on cinnamon coffee with smooth caramel (he was going through the list of coffees stencilled on a large blackboard behind the counter) while Gabriel got his diabetes-in-the-making usual and a slice of chocolate cake, and they ate it with ridged forks and sipped their coffee. Gabriel spilled a little of his and mopped it up with a tissue, which he screwed up and threw at Sam. Sam scowled, rolled his eyes, caught it (all in a moment) and threw it back, at which Gabriel somehow successfully knocked it at him again, but Sam decided to be the mature one (well, he saw Shane making his way over) so he put the crumpled tissue safely next to the now demolished cake.

"Hey, kiddos." said Shane, ruffling their head with both callused hands. "How was school?"

"Boring," said Gabriel around a mouth of sweet cappuccino.

"It was okay," Sam said at the same time, and rolled his eyes at his friend.

A crowd of customers left and Tina served toasted sandwiches to a mother and her little toddler, then came over to take a seat with Sam and Gabriel. "Enjoying your coffee, boys?"

"I really like this one," Sam nodded. "S'almost as good as vanilla cappuccino."

"Wait till you try the chilli sauce espresso." Tina told him with a wicked grin. Gabriel shuddered and fake gagged, while Shane and Sam laughed.

"And how was school?" Tina asked.

"Boring," Sam said lightly, while Gabriel answered, "It was okay." Gabriel rolled his eyes at him while Sam grinned and smirked.

"And your mom, Gabriel? How's she doing? She hasn't come by in a while."

"She's okay," Gabriel said, face darkening suddenly. "Just busy. She's always busy," he added, somewhat bitterly.

Sam wanted to ask why Gabriel obviously didn't like his mom but, well, that would lead open a line of questioning to his own parents and he wasn't going to touch that subject with a barge pole.

"Did you have a good day?" he asked Tina and Shane to break the tension. They shared a look and grinned.

"It was certainly... interesting." Tina told him.

Shane laughed. "Oh yes. You wouldn't believe us if we told you."

"I bet I would, too," Gabriel said, perking up. Sam stayed quiet.

"Well, it was something to do with werewolves." Shane told him laughingly. Gabriel slumped back in his chair and stuck his tongue out at Shane.

Sam ducked his head and pursed his lips and gave a quick prayer that Shane and Tina wouldn't be hurt when they went hunting because he really really liked them and he didn't think he could bear it if he suffered a loss in this quiet little life he had built up for himself.

"Sam?" said Tina, quietly. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Sam said and breathed in his cinnamon coffee, and took a gulp.

"Oh, Tina, it's your birthday soon!" Gabriel exclaimed excitedly.

"It is indeed." she said fondly.

"Twenty seven, that's pretty old," Gabriel mused. "Should I get you hair dye?"

"For when I get grey hairs?" Tina replied dryly. "Gabriel, you made that joke last year."

"You did," Shane put in, nodding along.

"I didn't!" Gabriel scowled.

"You do make the same jokes a lot," Sam joined in. "You probably did."

"Traitor." Gabriel hissed. Sam smiled beatifically.

"Well, we're closing up early today, so you boys better get yourself back home," Tina said. "Gabriel, do you want a lift?"

"Please," Gabriel nodded. It had started raining again. "I don't want to walk in that."

"Sam?"

Sam looked into the rain. He didn't have a jacket and he didn't want to walk either but he was strangely embarrassed about living in a motel. He hadn't yet revealed that particular fact to his best friend.

"Sam?" Tina prompted. "It's no trouble, you know. I'd actually rather I gave you a lift then you walked. I'd feel better that way."

Sam hesitated. "Okay, if it's no trouble."

"Great!" Tina said. "Shane, you can close up alright? I'll be back in a bit."

"Alright. Bye, Sam, Gabriel. Take care."

"Bye," they echoed, finishing their coffees. Tina went round the counter to get her bag and her keys and they went outside to walk to her blue Ford. "Shotgun," Sam called when he saw Gabriel opening his mouth to do the same, and smiled in victory and clambered into the front seat.

"Whereabouts do you live, Sam?" Tina asked, pulling her seatbelt on.

"Ah—Friar's Road. Do you know where that is? I can give directions."

"No, I know where Friar's Road is, but there aren't any houses on there." Tina frowned.

"Yeah," Sam said awkwardly. "We're, um—staying at the motel there."

Tina's frown deepened and Sam didn't dare look round to see Gabriel's face. "Are you not staying long? I thought you moved here."

"I am." Sam hurried to remedy. "We just—stay in motels a lot."

"Until you find a house?"

"No," Sam said, and bit the inside of his cheek because he shouldn't have said that. Tina gave him a long unreadable look and Gabriel was strangely completely quiet and they drove home in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be edited at a later date. :)  
> Thank you for all the wonderful comments and kudos!


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